Dougie Freedman savoured the best comeback of his managerial career after Glenn Murray's hat-trick gave Crystal Palace an unlikely home victory over high-flying Cardiff. Palace were two goals behind at half-time due to efforts by Aron Gunnarsson and Don Cowie, before two penalties and an acutely angled shot by Murray turned the game on its head.

"As manager it was the best comeback," Freedman said. "I don't think we deserved to be two down. To show the character and energy we did, it was a correct result. If you were watching the game, you saw we didn't deserve to be down. We played with fantastic approach play, with crosses.

"In the second half, the shots were coming off and we were causing them a lot of problems. Cardiff are a good side and we've stood up to good challenges with them and Forest this week [a 1-1 draw on Tuesday]."

Cardiff went ahead in the 13th minute when Peter Ramage failed to control a through-ball and Gunnarsson slotted home from just inside the penalty area. Cowie delivered a second blow two minutes later when he capitalised on some slack marking to strike home from a similar position. Craig Bellamy passed up the chance to make it 3-0 on 24 minutes, when he ran onto a flick-on from Mark Hudson but put his close-range effort over the bar.

Palace came out strongly in the second half and pulled back a goal seven minutes after the restart, when Murray slotted home from the penalty slot after Gunnarsson handled. Murray pulled the game level soon after the hour mark, squeezing a shot past David Marshall from a tight angle after a drive from André Moritz deflected to him at the back post. The comeback was complete on 72 minutes when Murray scored his hat-trick goal from the penalty spot again, after Jonathan Parr was fouled by Heidar Helguson.

Malky Mackay said the defeat was self-inflicted, following their impressive midweek win at Millwall. "We committed suicide by gifting Palace two penalties," the Cardiff manager said. "The first one, one of our players raised his arm. With the other one, Helguson made a rash challenge. I was disappointed today and delighted at Millwall. If we don't give two penalties away we would have sat on top of the table tonight.

"I don't have any qualms with the penalty decisions. In the first half we scored two good goals and the third chance, nine times out of 10 Bellamy would have taken that. But we gifted them two penalties."